DO PONDS OVERFLOW WHEN IT RAINS.....?

[Mmathis]

Once I've gotten my pond filled (not there, yet, though), what's to keep it from overflowing when it rains? Or is that ever an issue?

Curious, 'cause we covered our "hole" with a ginormous tarp the other day, a few hours before it rained. Our rain gauge measured just under 1" of rainfall. Our tarped hole, however, had at least 6" of water in it. We are working on berms around the edges to keep out any flow into the pond from run-off, so I'm not too concerned about run-off water getting in. But what DOES happen to the plain old rain water that falls into the pond -- does the extra water just overflow into the yard??? And if so, what happens to the little fishies?

 

[HARO]

In my case, I left one part of the pond edge about an inch or so lower than the rest of the rim, and used smaller rocks to edge that section. A heavy rain would simply overflow in this area, which leads to a shallow drainage ditch. Barely noticeable, but very efficient!
John

 

[Waterbug]

It can overflow and get between the liner and hole, which can fill the hole and float the liner.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

Yep, you definitely have to plan ahead for overflowing. The advice I was given was to make a drainage area in a spot where the water running out of the pond will not flood your yard or cause other problems. After I finished, I used 6-8 inch river rocks around the edge of my pond, so not only do I have a selected drainage spot, but as the water comes up it will flow in between the rocks so the fish won't just have a flooded channel to swim out of the pond.

 

[JohnHuff]

It rains lots here. I run a hose with a funnel in it under the waterfall. The other end of the hose leads into a drain. My pond is in a low area and if the water breaches, water from the lawn goes into the pond. It not only clouds the water with soil particles, I'm worried about any chemicals that might get into the pond.

 

[addy1]

I have a low spot where I have stacked rocks to make a outflow path that is non fish friendly. The water nicely flows down our slope away from the pond.
TM you can have a piece of piping with a screen over the end to keep the fish from following the water out, or have a piece of liner go out past your berm with a dry stream bed, depression to path the water out from your pond and away. Have that one area slightly lower than the rest of the pond. I chose a maximum water height level and made that piece of liner the low spot by about an inch, it has worked great.

 

[sissy]

I put in one corner of my pond an overflow pipe with one of those plastic drain grates on it .The grate is green so I can see if it is clogged with anything and the holes are small so small fish are not in danger of vgetting sucked in and where it comes out the back of the pond I have bucket there to catch any bthing that comes out .Thats why I like my partially above ground pond .

 

[taherrmann4]

I have a low spot on the one side of my pond which flows into a dry creek bed that has a liner under it, this takes the water about 10' away from my pond that eventually flows into my yard.

 

[j.w]

I built a berm around my pond and the top rocks around the pond keep any fish from floating out. I've never seen any fish laying about in the soil so I'm assuming there is no problem and I've been doing it this was for over 10yrs. We get rain here a lot but never anything like monsoons etc. I just consider it a nice partial water change for free. Guess if you get really hard rain coming down in buckets and it creates major flooding then you would have to set up some safety mechanism's like some of the above posters have done.

 

[Mmathis]

I almost forgot about this. I was in HOME DEPOT yesterday and got some non-perforated, corrugated drainage tubing. All I have to do now is come up with a grate, and I'll be ready once we get the liner in place.

 

[j.w]

Cool TM!

 

[Mucky_Waters]

Good to think ahead on that issue, without a drain area for your pond you could run into problems like Waterbug mentioned.

My last pond was concrete so I had no problem with a liner floating, but because my automatic irrigation kept the water level constantly topped up any rain at all meant I would get extra overflow. My biggest problem when it rained hard (which wasn’t a big problem really), was I would get a little backflow from the soil around the pond. I had lots of ground cover plants and no loose soil or substrate, so didn’t really get any debris floating back into the pond water, probably got some extra nutrients though.

With my new pond I thought well ahead because I wanted to set up a constant water change trickle system. To facilitate that I incorporated a large underground drainage pit and laid a liner sloping from the low spot on my pond liner to the drain pit. The liner is hidden by rocks and looks like a dry creek bed. I could probably run my hose full blast for days and never see my pond water rise more than an inch above the normal level. I don’t think I’ll try that though. LOL

 

[addy1]

I have some pvc piping with rocks over it, makes a nice overflow, it flows downhill and out into the corn garden

 

[Gardashians]

My neighbour has installed a water feature on decking (which is higher up) on the opposite side of my fence. It rains a lot here in Scotland and in the last year I’ve noticed my soil is now turning into a bog garden killing all my plants as they are just rotting!

 

[Lisak1]

@Mmathis - your very old question has been resurrected!